


Hardened By The Years

by Churbooseanon



Series: Guns For Hire [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Guns For Hire AU, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mercenaries, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-03-04 00:37:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2902922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some stories start on Adaptive. Some come to be there. Building breaking badass South Dakota has only ever known a life on the planet, and it leaves scars on her almost as certainly as it does on the planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eight

There are events in every life that shape them. Events that test and try a person and their reactions define the sorts of man or woman they will grow into. Sometimes there are one or two major ones with little ones so brief as to be unmemorable that define a person. Sometimes they are just a few that seem major at the time but are brief looking back. And some... Well, some leave their marks deep in skin and mind to the point where a person only ever seems themselves as the result of those moments.

Sometimes the only choice you have is to get tough to deal with those events. Because sometimes... they come far too early in someone's life.

* * * * * *

Today, Nicky decides as she smiles up at the ceiling, is going to be the absolute best day anyone has had _ever_. Period. Exclamation mark. Set in stone, no takesy backsies, pretty pretty please with sugar on top.

After all, today is her eighth birthday. Mom and Dad promised both her and Nic that they would have their first bikes today, and hers was going to be purple and have streamers on the handle bars and white wheels and be perfect.

Except she has to wait. Nicky sighs as she stares as the ceiling. Mom and Dad are already awake. They always wake up first and drink their coffee and read the news. But birthday means birthday breakfast and that never happens until her  _and_ Nic are downstairs. 

'Special days,' Mom always says, 'are always shared with family.'

Which means nothing can start until her sleepyhead brother wakes up. Which always takes  _forever_ . Nic getting up before someone work him was almost impossible. So... maybe she can help him along? 

Nicky grins massively as she throws her blankets aside and rolls out of her bed. Of course she yelps and jumps back in once her feet hit the cold floor. Stupid cold floors. She tries again, this time ramming her feet into her fuzzy slippers before shuffling over to his bed and bouncing onto it. Not that that is enough, not with the way Nic groans, rolls over, and tries to pull the blankets higher over himself.

“Nic,” she groans, reaching out to shake his shoulder. “Nic! Come on! It's our birthday! You've got to get up!”

“It's our birthday,” he agrees, not moving to look at her. “Which means I get to sleep in. No school, no chores, no nothing! Go away.”

No. No! She is not putting all the awesome parts of today aside for him. He doesn't get to be a grump. Not today. Not on  _her_ birthday. Their birthday. Whatever. 

“You can sleep later,” she whines, starting to tug at the blankets, at his arms, at his shirt. “Get up! It's breakfast time!”

“Nicky, shut-up!”

“Ooooooh,” Nicky jeers happily. “Mom says you're not allowed to tell me to shut-up. I'm gonna tell!”

“Huh?”

Too late for him to react. Nicky flings herself from the bed and laughs as she runs from the bedroom. Behind her she can hear her brother protesting and fumbling, likely trying to get his own slippers on. Meanwhile she runs down the stairs, still laughing, toward the pleasing hum of their parents' voices. As she makes the bottom step she hears them grow quiet, or maybe it's just that Nic's feet pounding after her that covers them. He's mumbling angrily under his breath and that almost makes her laugh more.

Mom and Dad sit at opposite short ends of the kitchen table when she rushes in, smiling widely. Nicky doesn't even hesitate at that, she's more than used to it. These days she sits between Mom and Dad on a long end, and Nic sits across from her. To keep him from kicking her under the table or pulling her hair when he walks by or any of that. Dad gets up quickly and moves to lift her in his arms, spinning her around and laughing.

“Morning, Birthday Girl!”

“Morning!” she giggles over and over until Dad puts her down in her chair, just in time for a grumpy faced Nic to stride into the room. Stride is her word for it, always a touch envious because it wasn't fair to be twins and yet have him be taller than her. Not fair at all, but Nicky put up with it.

“And there's the birthday boy,” their Dad goes on, moving to snatch Nic up into his arms to repeat the process with a complaining Nic.

Nicky, though, looks away from them to her mother, smiling brightly as she puts her coffee aside and stands.

“Happy birthday, baby,” her mother whispers, moving to kiss her forehead before walking away to the stove.

Nicky frowns at the movement. Normally Mom is as bright and cheerful as Dad. To have her so serious sounding is strange. But adults were like that sometimes, just like Nic pretended to be. Better to leave them to be serious if they want, especially when it means chocolate chip pancakes even sooner.

“We expected you two to sleep in longer,” Dad says as he plops Nic down in his own seat.

“Nicky wouldn't stop bugging me until I got up,” Nic complains and “Nuh-uh,” Nicky counters.

In true Dad fashion, Dad only laughs and goes to the fridge to get them both juice. “Either way you're both awake and down here now, so that's what matters,” he answers them, amusement in his voice. “Which means you can have your presents sooner.”

“Yay,” Nic yawns, absolutely no energy or joy in his voice.

What a spoil sport.

“Well, if you're going to act like that maybe I'll just give your gifts to Nicky,” their father warns and Nicky smiles as her brother grimaces.

“I'm okay with that!” Nicky assures him, beaming. “Twice as many...”

“I want my gifts,” Nic cuts her off.

“Then can I have his pancakes instead?”

“You have to share,” Mom laughs.

Well, she can handle that too. If only Nic would just smile at her every now and then.

Speaking of Nic, he's rolling his eyes at her.

Not today then, but maybe soon.

Yeah. Soon.

* * * * * *

It is indeed the best bike ever. Maybe it isn't purple, but it is close. Nic's is dark purple with black wheels and dark beads on the metal bits Dad calls spokes that click when the wheels spin and make the bike sound better. Already he's smiling and playing with the pedals, even though he's supposed to be paying attention to Nicky tearing at the pink and red paper that covers her own. But she doesn't care. She's happy to see the glimpses of color and shine that was going to be the best gift ever.

No, not just the best gift ever, but the prettiest, she decides as she runs her hands over the soft white seat and paws at the shimmery, sparkly pink and silver streamers coming from the white handles. Instead of dark purple the paint is a softer shade, one Mom immediately identifies as lilac, and Nicky things it is better because it is all hers. From now on she's going to ask for this shade and it will always be hers because from the way Dad and Nic look at each other it is very very clear that it was all Mom's idea.

The most important thing, she thinks, is the small plate on the back. Nic has one too, with his name painted on it in blue in Mom's elegant letters. Nic's name doesn't loop like hers does, though, in a minty sort of green and sprouting soft purple flowers of all shapes and styles. Her name on her bike and everyone would know it and envy her name and how pretty it is. No one else had a mom who could make words so pretty like theirs did. No one else had a mom who painted flowers and birds and other pretty pictures on their helmets.

No one else had anything like what Nicky and Nic did, not that he appreciates it much. How many people, after all, had other thems? It didn't matter that in the last two birthdays Nic seemed to have grown almost angry about that fact—the kids at school teased him and she didn't know why—because she knows he'll come around with time. She believes in him.

“Can we ride our bikes?” Nicky asks, flicking a training wheel with a smile. “Please, Daddy, please?!”

Her Dad looks to Mom, who immediately moves to stand.

“Are you sure you should...?” he starts to ask, but Mom waves him off.

“A few minutes won't hurt, even if tomorrow might be a better day,” she insists.

“We can take them to...”

It's the closest to a fight that she's ever seen them and on another day she'd care. As it is Nicky cheers and grabs her new bike by the handles and starts to wheel it toward the door. She hears Mom and Dad's voices as a low buzz behind her as she makes for the door. In the background there is the sound of a bike wheel spinning very slowly, creakily. That, she guesses, is Nic still playing with the wheel.

She makes it all the way to the door and the helmet stand before her Mom comes up behind her.

“So I can?”

“Of course,” she smiles, taking Nicky's helmet down from the shelf and holding it out toward her. “Do you remember how to put your helmet on properly?”

Nicky smiles right back up at her, letting go of her bike and taking her pretty purple helmet covered with flowers and vines. She carefully fits it over her head and presses the seal tight around her neck. Within seconds the display is up and greeting her with a smiley face. Her Mom made that for her back when she first got the helmet, and she'd never changed it before. And never would.

She doesn't wait for Mom to get her own helmet on. Instead Nicky heads to the door, wheeling her bike, and presses her hand against the pad by the door. It pings in inquisition and Nicky presses in the door code. At that the door to the airlock slides open and she bounces into the hold. There's a green light on the far door which means that the air outside is safe, and Nicky grins as she runs straight for the door, punching in that override code as well as she listens to her Mom call out behind her.

The words are drowned out as the door slides open with a loud rush of air, and in no small part by her laughter as it fills her own ears. She loves it outside, even if it is apparently dangerous. They tell her about it at school, they tell everyone about it at school and show them scary pictures. But her helmet is always in good shape and she always wears it when she goes outside because she's a good girl.

When she looks up the sky is beautiful. It isn't often that it's a clear, clean blue. Most of the time it's grey or slightly colored by the clouds. But now it's beautiful and blue. Of course it is, though. This is her eighth birthday and nothing, but nothing, can go wrong. The day is perfect outside because that is what she needs it to be, and so that is what it is going to be and that is just the end of the conversation. Forever. Period.

She sets her bike stable on the sidewalk and frowns at it for a second. It's all well and good to have one, but she's never been on a bicycle before, even with training wheels. Her friend Margaret up the road has one, and she seems to be pretty good at it, and Nicky knows she's better than Margaret and if Margaret can do it, well Nicky can too. Simple as that. No questions. So she considers the bike for a moment more before throwing one leg over it, perching herself on the seat, and then she has the peddles to consider. There is one on either side and she knows that you need to have your feet on them and pushing to make the bike go. It's sorta like that toy tricycle she shared with Nic when they were smaller, but that had been really stable and didn't shake under her the way the bike does now.

Nicky, though, she isn't the kind of girl that backs down from things. She can do this on her own. In fact, she could do it and be pedaling along before her mother even got outside. That will impress her and show her Mom just how much she loves her new gift. Loves it better than Nic does, and that she loves and appreciates her Mom and Dad too.

Her left foot hits its pedal first, the high one because she doesn't feel like she's balanced on that side. Even as she lifts her right foot to its pedal it rises to meet her as her left pushes down and then she's moving. Her foot fumbles for a moment to find its place and then she's pushing down again, letting the other pedal lift her left foot and she's moving. She's really moving. Not just a little bit, but she's going forward! She pushes again and again, easier and smoother by the time she hears the door open behind her, hears feet. She considers her handle bars and with her hands on it she moves them one way. The bike turns a little as she pedals. Turns it the other and it lines back up.

“Mom! I'm doing it, I'm doing it!” she shouts.

She even looks back over her shoulder, still pedaling, to look at her Mom. Yes, she knows that her Mom can't see her smile or smile back with her helmet on. But she looks anyway.

“Nicky stop!”

Nicky turns back around, sees the street, and realizes she doesn't know how to stop. Sees the car coming down the street and turns away from it. There's another stretch of sidewalk and if she turns on that she can...

The car turns. Pulls into the driveway down the street. It won't hit her, that much she's certain of. What she doesn't know how to do is stop. Still. Which means as the car comes to a stop in front of her she slams into the side of it.

She's dizzy, but that comes from the way she's going over the handle bars. Even though she tries to hold on there is clearly nothing to be done for it. There's a loud smack as her body slams into the car and she groans because her ears are ringing and her head is spinning and...

And she can feel a breeze on her face.

Not the normal kind of breeze you get from your air coming out of your helmet and into your face. No, that breeze isn't really feelable after you have your helmet on for a few seconds. You get used to it. This is cooler. Moister. Fresh.

There's a hand on her shoulder. Two sets of hands on her back. She looks up and tries not to wince at how her display is flickering and how there's light pouring in through a crack in the glass.

“Nicky, Nicky are you okay?” Mom asks at her side, and when she turns her head she can see flickers of that soft purple helmet the same shade as her bike.

“I thought she'd stop,” another voice, a man, their neighbor Mister Langley if she remembered right, tells her mother, sounding worried.

“It's a new bike. I don't think she... Oh god.”

Nicky watches on her flickering screen as her mother looks at her, and reaches out toward the crack in her world pouring in painful light with her hands. “Oh Nicky, you cracked your...”

A siren screams through the day, and Nicky's hands immediately go up to reach for the crack in her helmet. No. no no no no no. This is the absolute worst time for there to be an unpredicted cloud. The worst worst.

“Get her inside,” Mister Langley barks. “I'll throw the bike in my trunk and take it in. You can pick it up tomorrow.”

There are arms around her before she can think, and when Nicky looks up the flickering display shows a sky rapidly going toward purple even as red lights flash a warning in her helmet. Her feet aren't on the ground and her legs hurt and her side hurts and none of that matters because she's safe in her mother's arms and they are moving quickly. Racing for the door.

It's hard to see with a busted helmet. The world comes in fits and starts except through the crack which is blindingly bright and flashes with bursts of purple lightning from the clouds. She hears a door protest with a whoosh and the whole world around her goes a bit grayer.

“Mommy, I'm scared,” Nicky admits, clinging tightly to her mother.

“It's okay baby, it's okay. We're going to be fine. See, we're in the airlock now.”

Except the warning lights on the airlock are running high and bright, red circles spinning above her head. She hears her mother mumble something and then there are hands at the locks on her helmet.

“Mommy no!” she shouts, hands coming up to claw at her mother's fingers. “It's not safe!

“It's okay, baby. I'm just going to give you my helmet for a bit. Just until the seals all close and the filtration starts, okay?”

“But Mommy you need...”

“Nicky listen to Mommy!” her mother snaps and her hands fall away and in a second flat the helmet is tossed aside.

She has just long enough to look up and see the fear on her mother's face before there is another helmet fitting over her head and fingers at her neck, pressing the seals securely closed.

It takes the screen a few seconds to boot up, another few to display the world around her. All she knows in that time is that there are arms wrapped around her, holding her close and secure. They are warm, they are protective and they are all she needs. The helmet, and thus her face, are buried in her mother's chest and there are still alarms blaring, but she can't see anything. She sees a small red number in the corner of her display and it makes her eyes sting with tears as it slowly, far too slowly, gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

It feels like forever before the alarms go off and the red lights stop and the number is a calm, pale green zero. At last her mother's arms go a little slack and Nicky pulls away. She looks up at her mother and sees a relieved smile, just before she sees her mother's eyes roll back and she falls.

She's too small to catch her mommy. She's too small to do anything but scream and pound on the door when she's free because Mom is lying on the floor of the airlock and she isn't moving. She's too small and all she can do is pound on the door and scream in her mother's helmet.


	2. Ten

Sometimes Dad asks Nicky about her favorite class at school. So she tells him that it’s art because she gets to draw and make messes and try to paint Mom’s flowers. All of her notebooks are filled with the flowers Mom put on the plate of her bicycle. She’s too big to use it anymore, so Dad sold it, and the plate covered with vines and flowers hangs above her bed. Other times she says it’s science because she gets to learn how things work. Once she even tells him math, but that only happens because she gets a better score on her problem set than Nic does. 

Once the teacher asks them in class. Nicky is quiet as she listens to people respond. Gym because they play games. Art because they get to do whatever they want and get a free grade their parents like. Lunch is also popular, one of the ones that gets said the most. Every time she hears it, Nicky glares down at her desk. 

Lunch is the worst time of the school day. Dad doesn’t make lunch like Mom did, and some mornings he’s too busy to make it at all. The sandwiches are soggy sometimes, the lettuce limp, the tomatoes soft in the worst way. Sometimes Dad gives her the sandwich with the ketchup and Nic the one with the mustard even though she likes the mustard and he likes the ketchup. But Dad does his best and Nicky will never complain because, well, it’s not his fault that he has to make lunch. Or breakfast. Or dinner. 

No one’s fault but hers on that one. 

Nicky pokes at the sandwich in her lunchbox. She can see that there is red to the bread, ketchup again. Of course she’s gonna eat it, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy. But ketchup is just the first thing that is wrong with the day. There’s a small container of ranch dressing in the box too, for her carrots and celery. Nicky likes peanut butter better, but there is a boy in the fourth grade class that is allergic to peanuts, and so she gets ranch dressing. To finish it all off is a juice box. Grape juice. This morning all that was left was one grape and one apple. Nic likes apple more, so when Dad asked which she wanted, she picked grape. 

Nic didn’t even thank her. 

With a sigh she grabs her juice box and before she can pull the straw off the back someone is reaching over her shoulder. 

“Hey!” Nicky shouts as the person grabs her sandwich. 

Even as she reaches the sandwich is flying through the air to another kid. Red hair, green eyes, and far too many freckles so he looks like cinnamon sprinkled over snow, the fourth grader named Jimmy Jones. Which, of course, means the kid behind her who is starting this is the same person who starts it every day. 

“Sam, stop it!” she complains, turning to glare at the taller sixth grader behind her. He looks a lot like his little brother, except what Jimmy does, he does because his big brother taught him it. Nicky, on the other hand, knows that Sam is just mean. She can see it in his eyes. He’s mean like people who like to push you on the playground are mean. He’s mean like teachers who yell at kids who forget their homework are mean. Mean like the kids that steal lunch money or give people noogies, or things like that. 

Dad always says that hating people is wrong. Everyone has their own experience and their own life that makes them what they are. Kids that are mean will get better when they get older and they get that being mean doesn’t make people like them. But Nicky hates him anyway. Sam is mean just to be mean and to make people cry, and for some reason, people like him anyway. It’s not something she gets. 

The only thing that makes it worse is the fact that Nic stands behind and to the side of Sam. That her brother is there and isn’t saying anything. There’s nothing new there, though. 

All of this is just lunch as usual. 

Sam just laughs as Nicky looks up just in time to see her sandwich flying overhead and into the hands of another one of the boys. It’s always boys, never girls. The girls are mean because they whisper behind her back or pull her hair in class or steal her school supplies. But the boys? They’re hands on bullies. They’re terrible kids, and the teachers never see it, never look, never seem to know. Maybe they don’t care. 

There has always been a way that teachers look at her. Well, not always, because it started after Mom… 

“Sam you give me back my lunch right now!” she calls as she goes to chase it toward a small boy whose name she can’t remember. He’s new in Sam’s group, and even if he’s smaller than Nicky, he’s fast. Within seconds her meal is flying again and then, at a glance, her veggies are flying too. 

Nicky knows what they want, and she refuses to let that happen. Not today. No more crying. Ten year old girls don’t cry because someone stole their lunch. Or maybe they do. But she isn’t normal. 

“I don’t have it,” Sam laughs, and when Nicky turns to glare at him again, there is Nic, not looking at her. Of course not. Never been like him to even care. Sure, he doesn’t actively help them, but he doesn’t hold them back either. They’re his friends, and she’s only his sister. Not as high up. 

“Tell them to give it back,” she insists, jumping again to try and catch something. The juice is now thrown into the mix. 

“Why, you going to cry if they don’t?” Sam demands. 

“I don’t cry,” Nicky grumbles as she jumps again. Can’t help the wavering in her voice. Doesn’t matter that Dad got it all wrong, every last bit of her lunch wrong, right down to the fact that somehow her cookies had crumbled (but maybe that’s her fault too). It’s still her lunch. Dad still made it for her, just for her. Not for Nic who won’t speak up. Not for himself. But for her. Because he loves her still, even after what she did. 

The tears are hot on her cheeks and she’s angry. Every day and the teachers never act. Nic never acts. She’s left alone and behind and it hurts. All she wants is her lunch, her food. 

“Really? You’re crying now. Nicky’s just a little baby. Little crying baby girl can’t even eat her lunch,” Sam sneers. It’s a new word for Nicky from a book she’s reading. That’s what she does during recess to avoid everyone else. Doesn’t stop Sam and his friends from trying to hurt her there too. 

“I’m not a baby!” she says and Nicky, god she can’t even help herself. She just makes a fist and punches Sam in the stomach.

The boy stumbles back in shock, and Nicky doesn’t laugh as her sandwich hits him in the face. Apparently someone wanted to pass to him. Insult to injury. Fitting. She stands there, looking down at Sam as he sits on the floor, shocked. 

“You… you can’t do that!” he protests as he gets to his feet. “You just can’t.”

His hand pulls back and Nicky closes her eyes, wincing in advance of the hit she knows is coming. 

It never does. When she cracks her eyes open what she finds is Nic. Her twin, standing there, arms wrapped around Sam, pulling him back. Holding him back. For a moment Nicky stares, shocked by the action. And then Sam’s struggling and the other boys are rushing forward. She watches, and the look in those matching, pale blue eyes tells her all she needs to know. Nic doesn’t even need to open his mouth. Nicky just runs, right across the lunch room. The whole place is getting loud and the kids are shouting fight over and over and all Nicky can think of is to get to the teachers to help. 

Right now she’s too small to help him fight, but she can’t just let Nic do this on his own. Not when he’s finally acting. Not when the look in his eyes was only for her. 

Nicky doesn’t get her lunch back. Nor does she see her brother again during school. Or the other kids involved. His backpack is gone, his coat, and when Nicky slips out with their homework from their teacher, she finds Dad and his car there already, Nic in the front seat. With his helmet on he should be unreadable. But there is a hunch to his shoulders that she doesn’t know and doesn’t like, but it’s there. When she gets into the car his helmet follows her and for a while Nicky doesn’t look. Everyone is so quiet. Dad looks tense, upset. There’s been enough years for her to know he’s mad. 

It isn’t until they’re home that she knows what is going on. Dad sends him straight upstairs and Nicky follows. Nic sits on his bed, helmet discarded, and Nicky can see the damage. A swollen lip, a black eye, and a bit of blood on his chin. Dad has to know, but he isn’t trying to help, so Nicky is confused. Not that it matters. She sits down beside him on the bed and when she does he moves closer. Nic’s never moved closer, not once since the year before Mom died. When his arm wraps around her she leans in closer and places her head on his shoulder.


	3. Thirteen

The world isn’t even remotely fair. 

Nicky almost wants to laugh when the thought comes to her. What in the last five years has ever seemed fair about anything? Why should she think something is fair when on her eighth birthday she caused the accidental death of her mother due to plague cloud related health complications? Nearly two years her twin hated her for it, and in a lot of ways, she couldn’t blame Nicolas for it. In the end it was her decisions, her actions that led to the decision her Mom no doubt felt necessary to make. Then there was all those years in school where she put up with so much shit that it was actually painful to think about. Almost reaches up there with the loss she felt. 

What, though, can compare to this feeling, this pain, this suffering? 

“Nicole?”

Dad’s voice is a rasp of pain, so low and weak that at first Nicky thinks she’s hearing things. Has to be hearing things. Of course the chances of that are so small. When she gets into a drawing her whole world is consumed by it, and the one she is working on is more important than anything she’s ever drawn in her life. It’s a picture of Dad and Mom, years ago, laughing at the breakfast table. There is something in her head that says they laughed on her birthday. Another part that says there was less laughter in their house for a very long time and she needs to stop deluding herself. Already Nicky has spent the last ten minutes doing her best to get the shadows on her father’s face just right for the lighting she wants to convey, from the east-facing window in the kitchen, first thing in the morning. 

But no, not that simple at all. Nicky doesn’t hear things wrong when she wakes up, so she looks up, carefully setting her pencil aside, and she looks to the bed. Sure enough his eyes are open, though heavily lidded from his pain. The man lying before her in the bed is nothing like the one she’s drawing. The skin is pale, the bags under the eyes deep, and the face gaunt. There is little light in his eyes, and lines in his skin that shouldn’t be there at all. Lines not from laughter, not from smiles. From pain. 

People talk all about the dangers of the clouds when people don’t have helmets on. They never talk about how some people just can’t handle the slow build-up of chemicals in their bodies. After all the generations people have lived on Adaptive it’s less and less common. School called it survival of the fittest. Now Nicky wants to scoff. What about her dad wasn’t good enough to survive? Why should he die young when other people were terrible? When there were people who didn’t deserve to breathe, why should she have to lose him? 

“Nicky,” her father whispers again, and the pain must surge because his shaking fingers clench at the sheets of the bed. Quickly she puts her sketchpad away and scoots her seat closer. When she offers her hand he takes it readily. 

Once her father had the strength to make her hand hurt when he squeezed. Now it’s loose. So light that she can barely call it pressure at all. Still, she squeezes back as if it was strong, intent on letting her father know she’s there. It leads to a small smile curving his lips, and his eyes firmly on her, brighter than they had been moments before. Nicky’s free hand comes up to brush over his brow pushing the stringy remains of his hair away from his eyes.

“Hey Daddy,” she whispers, scooting her chair closer yet again. She’s practically against the edge of the bed, and were it not for the fact that the nurses yell at her every time, she would have climbed into bed with him long ago. If they were home she would have done it anyway, but Dad…

The only reason he’s gone on so long, she thinks, is because he wants every second with them he can steal. Steal is the right word too, from what she’s heard whispered between the doctors and her father when they think she’s asleep in the chair in the room. Or when she’s standing outside. No one will tell her to her face, of course, because she’s ‘too young’ to understand it. The thing is she’s not stupid. Neither her or Nicolas are. They deal with it their own ways. Nicky has trouble leaving her Dad’s side, and Nic…

“Where’s your brother?”

It’s not a question she wants to hear. Dad always asks her about Nic, but only because Nic prefers to be here when Dad’s asleep. It’s like he can’t handle seeing the pain. Probably can’t. Nic watched Mom as she was going. He’s not ready to sit next to another parent wheezing in pain. This time it’s Nicky’s turn. 

After all, this parent she hasn’t killed. 

But since Nic doesn’t want to be here to see the pain, it means Dad has to ask her. Sure, he asks about school and her art and the house, he asks everything else. Yet when the pain is worst and he’s afraid, he asks about Nic. Nicky gets why. People don’t give her credit for how good she is at observing things, at understanding things and people. Dad’s scared about what comes next, when he’s gone. What will happen to them. 

“Home,” Nicky admits. “We’ve got papers on the Great War due tomorrow.”

“You shouldn’t let him do your classwork. I’ve told you a number of times…” Dad says, his voice pitching low in his lecturing tone. Unfortunately low means a whisper that she can barely hear. Doesn’t need to hear, because it’s the same thing he’s told her a lot over the years. 

“I know,” she answers, trying to keep her voice soft. Bright lights, loud voices, and rough touches make him wince. The medications he’s on make him so sensitive these days. “Trust me, I know, Daddy. But it’s not like that. Yes, Nic is better at history, but I did all my own research on it. I wrote my outline and my drafts. Nic is doing his own right now and reading over mine for mistakes. I checked his math homework before I came to see you, so we’re good.”

There is a sigh. Maybe more of a rattle of breath. His grip tightens the littlest bit. Always tightens when he is in pain, when the breathing is too strained to be believed. Sometimes it leads to coughing fits. The clouds, the chemicals burn you from the inside out. Dad’s more sensitive than other people, and it’s eating him from the inside out. Or something like that. She stays silent until he’s breathing normal, and there’s a small smile on his lips. 

“You look out for him,” Dad says, and for a moment Nicky’s brow scrunches, trying to figure out what he means. 

“What do you mean, Daddy?”

The eyes that watch her are soft and worried, and every little motion she makes, he tracks carefully. Even when she reaches up to brush her own hair back he’s following her hand, as if the motion captures the imagination. Maybe it does. Maybe he longs for youth and health, or hair. There is so little of it left to him, a result of the treatments that hoped to spare him this. All of them gave him time, but not enough. Nicky knows what’s coming next, but no one wants to talk about it. 

“You have to look out for him,” her father repeats, his voice a bit firmer, a bit stronger. “Your brother. Nicolas. He can’t… Nicole, your brother is so soft. So gentle. He’s a good, kind boy. For the longest time I was certain he couldn’t be, not after everything. But he is, Nicky. He’s too good.”

Dad isn’t entirely right, Nicky knows more about her brother than Dad does. She knows things are different now. That Nic is starting to pick up a toughness that goes with his size, and since the first fight, Nicky hasn’t been messed with. Of course some of that may have to do with how she’s changed, how she’s getting closer to his size and she makes sure to dress in dark colors. For some reason people just feel less comfortable when you aren’t in bright, distinctive colors. Nicky doesn’t get it, but she does make use of the knowledge. 

“Promise me, right?” Dad asks. “You have to promise me that you’re going to look out for him. He can’t look out for himself.”

Part of her wonders if her father has asked the same of Nic. If they have conversations when she’s not here. Does he expect Nic to be able to do something she can’t? Maybe it’s even unreasonable for the two of them to even expect to be anywhere near each other in a month or two. Nicky’s done her research, and when it comes to it, she knows what happens next. The system. Foster homes. If they’re lucky they don’t get screwed like one of the horror stories on the nets. 

If they’re lucky, they won’t get separated. 

“I promise,” Nicky says, even if she doesn’t believe it’s true. Nic’s stronger than he looks. Not as strong as her, of course. Nic wants people to like him, but Nicky doesn’t care. She doesn’t bother to make people like her. She just keeps moving whether they like it or not. 

There is no choice but to keep moving. Not that it means leaving things behind. There will always be things she keeps. Like this moment. There is a look of relief on her father’s face as his eyes close slowly and the tension melts away. In moments like this he looks like her father as she remembers him. She can’t call him vibrant, but she can call him alive. Something that won’t be there long. 

With him asleep, Nicky goes back to her sketchpad. Carefully she sets the pencil to the paper and starts to shape his brows in the picture. There needs to be more definition, and since she’s doing this only in grays, it takes more work. Color alone cannot make the image she wants. Shadows are hard to capture, so fleeting and imperfect. To observe one is to see it change. The hardest part of drawing for her was to catch shadows just right. 

Her pencil presses down too hard, leaving a dark line cutting like a gaping wound across her father’s face in the picture. Not that she’s looking. Her attention is on the people pouring into the room as the alarms scream for attention. There’s no chance to ask what’s going on. Well, she does, she shouts, but hands are pushing her out of the way, out of the room. 

In the end the room is quiet and people trail out. The doctor stops by the door to look at her. 

His face is all she needs to see. The shadows on it will be fleeting too, but the darkness they leave in her heart… well, Nicky thinks they will always be there.


	4. Fifteen

Their foster father, a man named John (how bland), likes Old Earth music. A lot. Nicky hates the bounce and the thrum and the cheerful lyrics. The world isn’t bright and it isn’t sunny and it isn’t going to be good or get better. One of his favorites goes something like ‘should I say or should I go?’ The question isn’t that hard for her to ask or answer. Granted, she still made a list. Pros and cons listed out in her chemistry notebook because even at his craziest he never looks there. Too far over his stupid fucking head for him to get the point. Maybe he’s mad, maybe he hates her because she’s smarter than him. Way smarter than him. Her grades are nearly flawless and her teachers were whispering that she should be in higher level classes. 

Nicky has made the list over and over and over again. Yet no matter how many times she makes it, the answer always comes out the same. Two things in the stay. A hundred some in the go. In the end, she supposes, it’s no real question. She can’t stay here, can’t keep doing this. 

The bedroom in the attic is cold and dark at night. Problem is that there isn’t even a good blanket on her bed. The floorboards creak too, but Nic, he sleeps like the dead. There is no way he hears when she reaches up to touch her shoulder. Under the warm layer of her long sleeved purple shirt is a bruise nearly the same color. Nic had been at school working with the basketball team. John likes sports, likes that Nic plays them. Nicky just likes that her brother is happy, but she hates coming home from school without him. Gingerly she touches her shoulder, swallows back a wince at the pain. The final straw. The last mark in her book. 

Everything about the moment feels vivid in a way she can’t explain. Perhaps she’s always going to remember the rough drag of the blanket over her legs, or how cold the wood is against her toes. Against the pads of her feet as she hauls herself to standing. Two years can teach you a lot. Nicole knows exactly where all the creaking boards are, where each foot must be carefully placed to keep there from being any sounds. She is carried forward on silent feet to the closet. Already she’s packed. No one needs to know that she stole the bag from John’s closet. It’s already stuffed with her clothes, with what she needs. Her bookbag is filled with pre-packaged foods she’s stolen from school and the house. That is the cause of her bruise, of course. John accusing her of stealing apples, of course she had, but that wasn’t what she said. 

It’s not much, she knows as she pulls on two layers of pants--one tight, the other looser--and hauls on Nic’s favorite sweatshirt. It’s what she’s taking to remember him with, other than her sketchpad. She hasn’t drawn anything in it for years, John doesn’t like wasting money on art pencils. Nicky had no choice but to stop drawing after she used up the last of the ones Dad had bought her. Somehow, after all these years, they’ve stayed at each others’ sides, but today that changes. 

She puts on two pairs of socks and stuffs her feet into Nic’s gym shoes. Even though he’s taller his shoes aren’t much bigger than hers. With two pairs of socks she can handle them rather comfortably, and since they’re newer than the boots she’s got stuffed in her bag, they’ll last longer. 

Nicky needs to figure for things lasting longer. The streets aren’t kind. But, in the end, she has no where else to go. She can’t stay. The only reasons are Nic and because the government has to maintain helmets for kids in the system. Beyond that there’s nothing. The beatings aren’t worth it. The way John leers at her when he’s drunk. How often her allowance goes into some new thing for John’s hobbies. The insistence on foods that have mushrooms in them, when Nicky’s allergic to them. The way he gets mad when she isn’t home right after school even though Nic is allowed out until all hours. It goes on and on until Nicky wants to scream. There is no staying here, because there is no real home to stay in.

There hasn’t been a home for her since before her Dad died. 

The stairs down are half ladder, and there isn’t much Nicky can do to keep that descent silent. Not that she doesn’t try. Truth is she made sure that John had an extra bottle of beer before she went up to bed. That always meant he’d be out of it, dead to the world for hours. Sure she can’t go tromping down the stairs, but she can slip down with the creaks and thuds without too much fear. When she hits the hall she closes the staircase up and creeps down the hall. This one is carpeted, stained with things she can’t and won’t imagine.

A loud snore tears through the house and Nicky sighs with relief. Down the stairs she slips, knowing John will never hear. Part of her considers leaving the airlock open when she gets outside. A plague cloud could sweep over the city before dawn, and John could choke as he coughed up a lung. But no, Nic’s upstairs, and she can’t hurt him worse than she already is. 

Her mind flies briefly to the letter left up on Nic’s dresser. A letter written on the back of an old picture of their family she had made. But that is an apology, not an explanation. Dad is wrong, has been wrong. Nic isn’t strong in the same way she is, but if he found out what was happening, she would lose him to the cops…

What makes a man like John sign up to take care of kids? What turns a man who hates every breath she takes offer to give her a place in his home? How does anyone trust people like him with children? With her? 

Nicky pauses at the door to palm the lock open, and she grabs her bookbag. The sound of the air-seal breaking drowns out all else, and she stares at the dark void of the portal. This is farther than she’s gotten before this. Ever before. So many nights she slips from her bed. The first night she didn’t even get out of it. Last night she’d only gotten to the stairs down to the first floor. But tonight? Tonight things are changing. Tonight she’s going forward, out into the world. 

“So, are you going to do it this time?”

The voice makes her jump, and when Nicole whirls to look up the stairs, he sees Nicolas. Of course she does. The thing is, she hadn’t expected it. Not because he doesn’t love her. Not because he sleeps like a log. No, it’s because Nicolas has never been sneaky. He’s gotten so big, easily pushing toward six feet, and while he doesn’t have two left feet, he does seem to trip up when it really counts. 

He slowly moves down the stairs, and Nicky stays silent, looking at him. What does he mean by ‘this time’? She can’t even bring herself to ask. 

“Last night you didn’t make it down these stairs,” Nic whispers as he slowly makes his way to her side. “Some nights you can’t even get your socks on. What’s different this time?”

Apparently he’s been awake, apparently he’s been watching, and she doesn’t know what to do with that. When he approaches he reaches for her shoulder. Makes sense, actually, seeing as she doesn’t have the bookbag’s strap on the hurt shoulder. Most days she wears it on both. Better balance. But with how sore she is… Even when she pulls back it isn’t fast enough. Nic’s hand settles on her and she winces in pain. 

“How long?”

Always is not something she’ll say. The last thing she wants is for him to think he’s failed. Can’t protect her if he doesn’t know, and she never wanted him to know. She’s not a victim. She’s a survivor. Of bullies and of death and of loss and now of this. And survivors know when they’re pushing their luck. Survivors just start to move. At least, that’s what she thinks. 

“I’m going,” she tells him instead of answering. “I can’t stay here. I’m sorry, Nic, but this place isn’t good for me, this isn’t a…”

Nicky’s cut off guard when he’s wrapping his arms around her. Nic doesn’t quite know what is going on, that much is clear, but Nicky lets it happen. He needs this. If a hug is what it takes for him to let her go, then she’s going to let him have it. 

“Tomorrow night.”

His voice is a whisper, a soft promise that Nicky doesn’t know what to do with. Well, no, that isn’t true. She pulls back and looks up at her brother, shocked. “What?”

“Tomorrow night,” he repeats, but that doesn’t clarify it any more. “That’s when we go.”

She stares up at him in horror. “What? No, Nic, you’re not going anywhere. John likes you. Takes good care of you. You can’t just leave.”

The look he gives her is incredulous. 

“Anyone who hurts you isn’t taking good care of me,” he counters. “I’ve been waiting for you to be ready. Truth be told, I’ve been stealing money from John for a few months. Using the team to get lunch and keeping my money from it. It’s not much, but it’s a better start than nothing at all.”

“Nic, I…”

He kisses her brow and slips her bookbag from her arm. Nicky just stands there as her twin lowers the bag to the floor. Then he takes her hand and pulls her toward the stairs. “Give me twenty-four hours. Then, when we go, we won’t ever have to look back.”

The sound is like a promise, and she doesn’t know how to handle it. 

Then again, it sounds good enough for her to be happy with it. Nicky lets her older brother pull her back up to their beds, and she stays there as he helps her take off her boots, her extra socks, the sweatshirt. All of it gets put back where it belongs, and at Nic’s prompting, she gets ready for bed again. When she’s stretched out in the bed he straightens the blankets and kneels by the bed like Dad used to. Nic brushes the hair from her eyes and smiles down at her softly. 

“We’re going to make this right Nicky, I promise.”

“You can’t just make it better because you want it to be better,” Nicky points out quietly. “This isn’t something you do lightly, Nic. The streets aren’t…”

“I know,” he answers. “I have a plan.”

Leave it to Nic to think big. Nicky’s the smart one, but he’s the one who goes big on the planning. He picks their classes for school. He balances their schedules. He reminds her when to do homework and when papers are due. Without him she’d be all potential and no execution. Without her he’s all planning and no inspiration. Together…

Together they are an amazing team. 

Her brother kisses her brow before getting up and crossing back to his bed. He hesitates for a moment, and Nicky watches as he picks up a piece of paper from his dresser. The picture. Nic smiles at her, and in the darkness she can almost see it. She knows it’s there, though. Has to be there, because Nic smiles so much easier than she ever has. 

“You should keep this,” Nic tells her softly, and she watches her brother move to tuck the picture into her dresser. “We’re going to want to remember the days like that when we can. Keep it safe for me, alright?”

Does she even need to answer?

For the first time in a long while, Nicky falls asleep with a smile on her lips.


	5. Seventeen

The best part about the undercity of C0-R6-S, is that it’s an undercity. Not where Nicky expected to be two years back, granted, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love it. Chorus is a beautiful place compared to the surface. The streets are darker because there is never a true day underground, but that is more than balanced out by the fact that more often than not, Nicky doesn’t have to wear her helmet all the time. The dangers of their first apartment are gone, replaced by the newer, greater dangers of the life she lives now. Namely this… 

Nicky revs the engine of the bike below her, and the purr of it just makes her almost want to purr right back. Her beauty, her perfection, her Dakota. The motorcycle, poison green and sleek, responds immediately to her touch and Nicky doesn’t laugh. The slightest shift of her weight shifts the whole thing under her like a dream. The secret isn’t just the speed, just how responsive the thing was. A year of work and Nicky has gotten herself the perfect partner for her racing. 

“You treat that thing like a pet,” Nic chuckles as he looks down at his sister, and Nicky just grins up at her brother. 

“You say that now, but you can’t argue that she’s improving our life,” she chides him, stroking the handlebars of her baby quite affectionately. 

Nic rolls his eyes like he always does when she personifies her bike, but he doesn’t get it. Nicky had known from the second she’d been given her first motorbike by her new courier company here in the undercity that if she treated the thing right, it would get her far. And now look at her, best street racer there was in the whole of Chorus. 

“Did you have to name ‘her’ after Mom?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest. His broad fucking chest. Nicky actually envies him. She’d thought he was tall when they were younger, but Nic just kept growing. Of course that size had worked well with the construction company he’d started to work with back home, and definitely benefited both of them when the company had moved Nic and her to Chorus for a major project as a shift manager at only seventeen. 

Nicky strokes the name airbrushed over the poison green of the bike’s paintjob. All the street bikes have names it seems, and when Nicky had paid for the repainting after her first win, she needed a name. Mom’s maiden name had seemed… right. Mom gave Nicky her first bike. Only proper to remember her now. 

“You’ll be careful, right?” Nic asks, like he always does before a race. Once he asked if she thought she’d win too, but he’s long since given up on that. Nicky wins, no questions asked. 

“Of course,” she smiles. 

“Burke is here today,” he points out, and that makes Nicky sigh. The other biker is a bit of a ruffian, and there has been a few points where he’s been implied to have sabotaged a bike. It’s why Nicky never leaves Dakota unattended when Burke is racing. 

Concern makes her eyes search for Burke, and when she finds him, she doesn’t like what she sees. From the throng near someone with a white coat, she knows what has to be happening. With a sigh she gets off of her baby and hands her helmet to her brother. “Watch her for me, okay?”

The look Nic gives her is one of confusion, but Nicky doesn’t wait for an answer. She knows that he won’t leave the bike’s side. While his job does them good, most of their survival is based on the time and effort they’ve put into her motorcycle. Her winnings keep them in good clothes, good food, and ease when construction work is sparse. Letting someone mess with Dakota would be unthinkable, so Nicky knows her girl is safe as she walks away. 

“Rookie’s got a mouth on her,” Nicky hears Burke say as she approaches the group. 

“I haven't been a rookie since you had fashion sense. Ooooh, wait, that was never. Damn.”

The voice is beautiful, enough to lure Nicky even closer to the situation. What she finds is a woman even more beautiful than her voice. Long, dark hair is caught up in a high tail. Bright eyes that are filled with amusement, and a complexion that Nicky just want to stare at for hours. Add in that sharp tongue and despite her best efforts to keep silent and watch, she has to chuckle. Not that anyone looks to her. No, their attention, just like hers, is on the white and blue clad woman. 

“You think you’re so great,” Burke starts to say, and Nicky can hold her tongue no more. 

“Really, compared to you, Burke, this lady looks like a fucking ace.”

The woman’s laughing eyes turn to Nicky, and wow they trail over her like a dream. Strange, since she started racing Nicky has dressed a bit more revealingly, hoping to distract her male competitors. She gets oggled every now and then, but Nic’s protective bulk is just as effective as her right hook at keeping them away. But those eyes on her? Nicky thinks she likes that. 

“What the fuck have I told you about harassing the fresh meat, Burke?” Nicky asks, plowing on and tearing her eyes from the beauty on the bike painted with the name ‘Pelly.’ 

“Dakota, uh…” Burke starts, turning his attention to her. She’s got the guy long since nervous since he tried to make a move on her and she broke his nose. Pretty sure Nic threatened worse too, but hey, that’s life. 

“He bothering you, Ace?” Nicky asks, returning her attention to the new woman. 

“Well.. I suppose it depends on what you mean by ‘bother,’” the woman responds, sounding quite bored. But the sharpness of her gaze tells Nicky that she’s reading the tension of the situation perfectly well. 

“Just don’t like the idea that any old bitch with a…”

No. No, Nicky was not having this asshole insult the beauty on that bike. So she holds her hand out to Burke, barely even looking at him. “Pink,” she orders. 

“What!?” Burke demands, and Nicky loves how he’s shaking. Racing for slips barely ever happens, but when it does, it tends to ruin the loser. Nicky’s only ever seen one racer come back from it, and he had gone on to be a courier merc. 

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times. Don’t judge a racer you’ve never faced,” Nicky insists, her voice low and threatening. She’s going to pound his head in if he doesn’t listen. “If you’re that ready to judge her just by her bike, then you’re more than confident enough to race for slips.”

“I didn’t… I…”

Nicky ignores him and turns her attention to the beautiful woman, smirking. “Ace, you willing?”

The look on her face is one of utter confusion. Shit, she doesn’t know what’s going on. Well, Nicky has to keep moving anyway. That’s how this place keeps control. She’s the honor among the metaphorical thieves, and until she’s usurped from the top position, she’s responsible for keeping things clean before a race. But the woman, bless her, nods in agreement. 

“Good. Whichever of you two finishes better gets the other’s bike,” Nicky grins and Burke storms away. She’ll get Nic to pick up the thing later if Burke loses. She waits until the group has disbursed before Nicky looks to her stranger. The look of horror on her face is alarming. 

“Wait, what?” the woman demands. “Now listen here, I spent…”

“I don’t care,” Nicky answers coldly. She’s messed up and now she just has to keep control. Besides, if the stranger backs out, she’ll be kept out of the races anyway. “You’ve already agreed, in front of witnesses.”

“This is my only…”

Nicky hurts to realize what she’s done. But she tried. Wanted to be right. Now, all she can do is hope it works out well. “Well then, Ace, I suggest you win.”

Later, when Nicky finds the woman again after the crash her heart is in her throat. Don’t let her be hurt. Don’t let her be dead or broken. The accident never would have happened if she hadn’t opened her mouth. Still, she has to act cool and composed. Which is why she sent Nic to recover Burke’s bike for the woman. Looks of the wreck says that she’ll need a new one to keep going. 

Something makes her move forward after she finds the woman whole, gives her the new bike, and tosses the woman’s prize money to her. Makes her grab her Ace by the collar, drag her close, and press their lips together. Her first kiss is a stolen one, but no less sweet for it. And when Nicky pulls away she has to grin. Because every second of it was worth it. 

“Better see you back here soon, Ace,” she whispers, watching as the woman touches her lips and grins. 

“Soon,” the other woman promises. “And when I do, I’m going to beat you too.”

“Now there’s a woman after my own heart,” Nicky admits as she backs away and moves to her bike. “You’re welcome to try.”

God help Nicky, because her Ace tries just that.

* * * * * *

Nicky refuses to see it as running. Sure, it’s leaving behind a lot of what they had done the last few years and what they had become, but it’s what they need as well. When they came to Chorus, Nicky made her brother promise that at some point they would go home. Not because they want to, but because they need to. She needs to. Has to go back and visit where Mom and Dad rest. Go back and prove to John that they never needed him. Of course they can’t do it before they’re eighteen. If they go back early then something could happen. They are still runaways. They are young enough to properly belong in the system. Nicky doesn’t want that, won’t let anyone take her away from her twin. 

That doesn’t mean she’s happy to be going. Maybe it’s not today, but it’s soon, too soon for her tastes. Soon enough that this, in the grand scheme of things, that this is really the last race she can manage. One last victory. One last time rolling over the finish line and collecting one last big payout. The money, she knows, will help pay to ship Dakota back home with them in safety. After all of this, Nicky loves her mobility far too much to lose it now. Not for a trip home. 

But with the finish line behind her and the ref coming up to her with her packet of money, Nicky doesn’t know what to do with herself. Three weeks out from their move, their return, their claiming their lives and their names again, and she feels like she’s grieving all over again. 

“Dakota.”

Nicky goes very still on her bike before she finally looks up and finds the same sight that always tightens her chest and leaves her breathless. How is it possible that Ace seems more and more beautiful with every passing meeting? Perhaps it’s the joy in her eyes. The win for Nicky had been a narrow thing. The last six months have been amazing for Ace’s clawing her way to the top, or near it. The newcomer has even knocked Nicky out of her top position a few times. Tonight Nicky’s victory has been pulled out by just the tiniest margin. Maybe because her mind was elsewhere. Is elsewhere. Is here in this moment. 

“Ace,” she smiles at the woman as she tucks the money into her coat. “Nice for you to make time for me. Sorry to tell you that I kicked your cute ass again.”

The woman rolls her eyes, a thing that Nicky is more than happy to see now. It happens often enough at this point. Six months and Nicky has learned the right buttons to push. 

“Yeah, that’s what happened,” Ace chuckles, balancing her helmet on her hip. “Mind telling me how I got so close today?”

The look Nicky gives her is feigned offense. Really, what’s got her is that somehow the other woman knows how to read her when she’s riding. How much time must Ace spend looking at her, watching her? On the weeks where Ace doesn’t race, does she stay there on the sides and watch Nicky, eyes glued to how she moves? Do those eyes follow the curve of her hips and the shape of her legs, and how she fills out the tight shirts that NIcky so loves? Maybe Ace watches her the way she watches Ace. 

“I’m leaving,” Nicky admits quietly. “Was thinking about how I’m going to miss this.”

Ace stares at her, like Nicky’s grown a second head. 

“Go?” she asks. “Why would you go?”

As if she could understand. Nicky smiles sadly and shakes her head. “It is what it is. Looks like you’ll be top dog soon.”

“You mean bitch,” the woman laughs. 

Nicky stares for a moment, very confused. “You calling yourself a bitch? Dude, just because Burke…”

“Right,” Ace chuckles, and Nicky just stares on in confusion at her amusement. Sure, Nicky owns the term herself, knows it will keep her from being approached in the same way a few other racers are, but why would she want it? “You guys don’t tend to have pets here. A female dog is called a bitch. So a woman being the top dog…”

For another moment Nicky stares, and then she’s laughing at her own failure to understand. “Alright then. Be the bitch in charge.”

“Why are you going?”

Nicky doesn’t really have an answer for that which will satisfy. So she doesn’t offer one at all. Like with the first time they met, Nicky moves forward. She hasn’t been near Ace in the way she’s wanted since that first meeting. Now, though, it feels like less of a risk. This is the last time they’ll meet, so why not do something that doesn’t make too much sense. If she asks she might get rejected. If Ace realizes how young she is, she knows she’ll be cast aside. But in this moment there is no risk. No chance to meet again. 

Ace seems to see it coming, but the woman doesn’t pull away. So Nicky moves in, gets her fingers up in that hair. It’s soft like silk and it’s a bit wet. Doesn’t bother Nicky, she gets why. Racing is high energy, high emotion, high focus. Even with all the air whipping around a rider, they still sweat. It’s nice to see Ace as much a victim to that as Nicky is. Not that it compares to how moist her lips are. When those lips part, Nicky has to pursue the offer and it feels so good. Hands settle on her hips and Nicky’s arms go up around her neck. They pull together more and the only reason Nicky thinks it ends is because she hears a voice clearing behind her. 

When she pulls back and looks over her shoulder, she finds her twin there. What she wants to do is yell at him. Instead she grabs her helmet off of her bike and walks away. She doesn’t bother even saying goodbye.


	6. Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Those long standing warnings about there being Rape/Non-Con content? That's here folks. That's this chapter. Nothing graphic, just post-situation, and South dealing with it. But if there is a chance at all this is going to upset you, please just skip this chapter. Take care of yourself first!

There are a lot of things that Nicky knows when she wakes up. For one she knows her name is Nicole, and that she’s on the planet Adaptive. That latter part is far more important than her name at the moment. Adaptive is a deadly planet with deadly clouds and if she doesn’t put her helmet on before one comes, she’ll die. Almost happened once before, right? Nicky is certain it has happened once before, that someone died for her. 

Eyes cast about, because there is no darkness around her head. She can feel the air in her lungs and it’s easy. No filter. Open air all around her and no heads up display over her vision. Her eyes search until at last she catches sighs of what she wants. Purple accented with poison green. What she doesn’t expect is the splatter of blood on the visor. A long moment Nicky stares, watches, wonders. It forms a pattern, but for the life of her, she doesn’t know what to make of it. Each drop different and distinct, save the ones that are smeared, and the veins of blood in a spidering of cracks she doesn’t remember. 

What she remembers is it’s her birthday. She’s eighteen today, ten years since… She doesn’t remember what. It’s important. It’s vital. It’s all of what she is now. The part of which she is the sum, but god she doesn’t know. Doesn’t remember. It’s too important to forget, and she knows that. 

Also knows that she has to get that helmet on. 

Nicky stretches for it, only processing where she is in that very motion, in that moment. What she finds is that she’s stretched out on the ground, cold cement underneath her. The ground is rough as she pushes herself up onto her elbows. Makes no sense that she was on the ground, but she was unconscious and it’s not like she remembers, so it’s better to just accept. A single leg curls under herself, her harm under her chest to push herself up to kneel. Her hand reaches out toward the helmet and…

Why are her knuckles bruised, why are they as marred with blood as the helmet? Nicky freezes, arm outstretched, and her hands shake at her vision. Bruised knuckles and bloody fists. When she twists her hand to look at the palms she finds scrapes. Nicky rolls back, puts her weight on her heels and kneels there. Her body is balanced but her mind is spinning. The further up her arms she looks the more scrapes she finds. The more blood. Her forearms are bare. Nicky remembers a coat, a leather half coat in purple that fits loosely unless she buttons it up. There is nothing like that. In fact, she feels cold without it. Feels cold as the air blows over the bare skin of her arms, her shoulders, her… 

Her eyes look down and a sob tears from Nicky’s lips. Regardless of the blood she wraps her arms around her chest, covers herself as she doubles over. Nicky doesn’t cry, hates crying, knows she doesn’t do it. Too strong. Doesn’t know what made her strong, but knows she’s strong. Yet here she is, almost doubled over, sobbing at the potential of this moment. What it means. Every now and then her eyes come up to the helmet, sees herself in the visor, and the vision she finds is pathetic. Disgusting. A broken woman. 

It takes a while for her to notice the sour taste in her stomach, smell the wrongness in the air. Looks aside and… the reason is clear. At last Nicky lunges forward. Grabs her cracked and blood covered helmet and slams it into place. The filter, the fans, they keep the scent at bay, keep her in control. She can present a strong face like this. Because she presents no face. Again her eyes cast about, and they linger further down the alley, behind her. An alley. Why is she even here? Memories come half-formed in her mind, of a trio of men and a club and the music so loud and pumping in her veins. 

‘Don’t stay out late,’ she had been told. Nicolas told her she thinks. The name fits into place in her mind. Herself, he’s another part of herself, there since her birth, and there forever more. Her brother, her twin, her support. He should be here. Was supposed to be here. He isn’t here. Where was he? Should have been there last night, but Nicky had declared that from midnight until three was her time. Party to celebrate being an adult. In the morning they would face their past together. But the night was going to be hers. 

Nicky shouldn’t have left him behind. Where is he now? Part of her says start up her helmet, send him a message. Nic will come for her, he always does. But no, there is something else to look to. The man in the alley. 

Arm wrapped around herself, Nicky stumbles forward a few steps, closer and closer. Collapses next to the fallen form. His helmet is nowhere to be seen. His face is bloody, so bloody. Something tells Nicky that the wounds were ones she gave him. A broken arm, a split lip, and blood on the ground from where she must have slammed his head into the concrete time after time after time. 

His face is familiar. His face is one of the three. She doesn’t know where the other two are, but the man’s body is cold to the touch. 

Again she sobs, this time in her helmet. There is a beeping in her ear that she can’t explain. Doesn’t matter. It gets faster, each beep more insistent than the last, and then it’s a solid noise that cuts out. 

“Nicky!” a man’s voice shouts. The same. Nic’s. 

Still on her knees she looks back over her shoulder and sees him there. Standing there, tall and strong, her shelter and her strength. Left behind. His stance is open, his whole body screaming fear and tension. And then he’s rushing forward. For a moment his hands clench. Then she’s watching him whip his coat off. 

“Nicky,” he repeats when he’s at her side, his voice soft and when his hand settles on her shoulder she flinches. Wants to heave and needs to scream and she knocks his touch aside. 

There is a reason it feels wrong, that it upsets her. Nicky can’t explain why it is like that. What in her mind wants to push her brother away. Maybe she doesn’t want to define it. Maybe it’s something she fears to know, fears to have in words because then it will shape her. Define her. Be what makes the sum of Nicole just like this day ten years ago where there was another person doomed to death in her presence. Killed because of her, by her, through her actions. But, well, maybe she doesn’t want to think too hard about it. 

Maybe she doesn’t even know why she doesn’t want to know. 

“Don’t,” she pleads to him. “Please, just…”

No more words come. Maybe he reads between them, or reads their lack itself. Either way his coat settles around her shoulders, all without the weight of his touch upon her. He can’t touch her. She’s dirty. Broken. Unclean. Not what she once was, and she doesn’t know how to get it back. 

Weakly her bloody hands come up, and she clutches at the edges of the coat. Pulls it shut around herself, pulls it tight. Fabric overlapping fabric covering the lack and bruises she knows to be on her skin that hadn’t been there twenty-four hours ago. He makes a quiet sound, a questioning sound, and somehow Nicky’s body knows what it means. 

Maybe it’s because they are twins, maybe for once they are tapping into things people have always thought they had. With no more prompting than that she is standing, and he hovers there at her side, his whole body screaming the concern he won’t voice without her okay. Nicky nods briefly, and then his hand is feather light at her elbow. Barely a touch is guidance enough to turn her in the direction he came from. 

Her mind races as he guides her away from the scene. Rushes along a mile a minute, going nowhere, going there in circles, and never lingering long enough on any one though to leave an impression in her conscious thoughts. The only thing that sticks with her is the feather-light touch and the constant whispering of soft affections, assurances, promises that she can’t turn into words. They’re just series of noises strung together endlessly as he guides her away. 

They leave the body behind them, and with it Nicky tries to leave the fear. The weakness. Wraps herself in the strength her hands have hidden in the blood and scratches and bruises, and she swears that it will never happen again. Nothing bad will ever happen to her again. Neither of them will allow it. 

They leave the body behind, and the only thing Nicky lets herself keep is the knowledge that she could, and would, leave more behind her if it meant her safety. Her survival. Her freedom from moments like this. 

Together they walk away, and more importantly, she lives.


	7. Nineteen

There are parts of the work that annoy her. The long meetings that led up to the work tends to bore her, and the patronizing tone the clients like to take with her because she doesn’t look nearly as intimidating as Nic with how she slouched in chairs and barely looked at their employer. Thing was, the planning side of all of this bored her. Once Nic asked her why she couldn’t just ‘behave’ to impress the clients, and Nicky had rolled her eyes. She had to remind him who and what she was. The years of racing taught her to live in the moment, to be adaptable, to improvise when things went wrong. Because things always go wrong. 

“South,” her brother calls, using the codename that ended up attached to her. Dakota apparently has some meaning back on old Earth, and there was apparently two of them that mattered. North and South. Of course the two have embraced the codenames more than their working title. “South, what in the world are you doing?”

“Bored,” she answers, but they both know the situation is way more complicated than that. 

“We’re not here to be entertained.”

There is a quality to his voice that makes Nicky want to laugh. It’s not like he’s the one in danger. Seven city blocks away her older brother is laying on his stomach on the roof of a building, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. His sniper rifle, a new model, keeps him company and Nicky knows it’s the right tool for the job. At least, for his part of the mission, which is the final blow.

Not that her part is exactly simple. Killing the head of a company isn’t exactly easy, especially when they have a secure home base and they can hire insane amounts of men to cover their asses. Bulletproof windows and massive alarm systems and more problems than a sniper can handle on their own. EVen with a spotter Nicky knows her brother can’t do the job with their client safe in his tower. No, the easiest point to take out a target is when one is being transferred between locations, and then they hole themselves up in their bases. 

The wildlife documentaries they’ve watched talk about these sorts of animals that specialize in extracting troublesome prey from tight spaces. Cutting animals out of shells and digging them out of crevices in rocks. Prying them from their castles, their fortified walls, their homes. Using specialized beaks and claws and favored rocks that shells could be cracked open upon. Nicky is a specialized hunter now, she is the blade that cuts, the claws that rend, the rock that shatters the calm.

Is there a better way to destroy that calm than with her new baby?

“I don’t know, I’m feeling pretty amused right now,” she tells her brother as she crosses the large entry hall, hefting the great weight of her new toy even higher. Across the room one of the easily identifiable guards shouts a string of words in a language Nicky doesn’t know. Of course the character of his voice and the way he runs to dive behind a stone framed desk, dropping his semi-automatic gun as he hides, really did makes it seem like a string of curses. Fearful ones at that. 

“You know, that revelation doesn’t actually comfort me in the slightest,” Nic sighs across the line, and Nicky can practically taste his concern. But not the kind of concern that comes bogged down with fear, or him thinking she might get hurt. Neither of them would think of her as bored if there was any imminent risk of death or grave bodily harm. Sure, there is always the understanding that she can, and likely will get hurt in some way during a job. Yet that is what she signed up for, and what she lives for.

Neither of them question the idea that Nicky is an adrenaline junky. That she thrives in conflict and overcoming all odds. The only thing that cheers her more than a race is the destruction and mayhem that has let her carve her name into the mind of the underworld. Especially when it comes with explosions. 

“You okay in there?” Nic asks, finally more serious. “There is supposed to be a lot of…”

“Don’t worry,” Nicky assures him, holding down a target-lock button and sweeping the aim of the massive LAU-65D missile pod across the assemblage of guards that spill from an elevator before her. There is a satisfying sound as the device beeps to register each target-lock, and the men frozen before her in the hall and on her HUD are surrounded by red boxes. 

One shouts a warning as Nicky flips the safety guard off and thumbs the firing key. 

“Nicky?”

The voice comes through her comm a moment after the series of five explosions rings through the building. Half a second there she had thought maybe she might be deaf from the hollow sound of the world outside of her helmet, but the sound of her brother’s voice reminded her of the inbuilt sound-dampening override command the missile pod had turned the external sound intake off from her helmet. Bless the damn thing. Wasn’t it cute? Pleased with herself, Nicky ducks behind a pillar where she stashed the crate of missiles and quickly restocks her weapon. The show is only starting. 

“Little busy now, North,” she answers. “And you know better than to call me that.”

“I’m sorry. But, South, what the hell is my helmet doing reading explosions from your sensors?”

“No reason,” Nicky laughs as she gets her new weapon ready and hefts it up again. Nothing like explosions to drive the prey out of hiding. “Keep your eyes open. Lola and I are about to send the little rat scurrying for safety.”

“Roger. But… Who’s Lola?”

“Oh, just my new best friend forever. She’s going to help us move up a few ranks, aren’t you girl?”

There is silence for a while as Nicky runs for the stairs. A few more explosions further up the building and the target will be rushed out to his helicopter on the roof. All it will take Nic to finish the job will be a single shot, and then Nicky has to get back out and they have to get to ground. But today? Today she’s not worried in the slightest. She is South fucking Dakota, and the whole world best fear her wrath. 

“Sis, you know we’re not allowed to have pets in our apartment, right?”

She hopes he will remember the way her laughter rings out when she introduces him to her new weapon later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for joining me for this story. I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
